stranded

well, the trip got off to a fine start this morning. i hit the airport just in time, despite the rough traffic on the drive in. the plane was on time and we left lax exactly when the flight was supposed to. but then everything quickly went downhill from there. i was seated on an aisle, which i don't mond, but the couple sitting with me brought along their two toy doberman as carry on baggage. one of the dogs would not shut up and kept whining and scratching at his carrier. i won't rant about them, though.

the flight was smooth and we landed in chicago for the connecting flight on time...no problems. so i make the trek to the international terminal checking all the departure information, seeing that the flight is on time and planned to leave as scheduled. but at the security screening, the tsa agent looks at my boarding pass and says, "you need to head back to the bmi counter and get a dinner voucher, you're not leaving until 11pm". ugh. it's currently 5pm.

so, i've got 6ish hours to kill in chicago o'hare. guess i'll catch up on my blog reading. i don't mind the delay, really, as i'm pretty good at entertaining myself. the concourse here is quite long, too, so i could always go for a run. the only real bummer is that i won't get into manchester as early as i'd hoped. i was looking forward to an entire afternoon of roaming congleton and taking photographs, followed by a run on the local forest trails. we'll see how that pans out.

saturday i hop on the train to go hook up with karin and andy and get the race packet/drive the course/gorge on pasta routine. really looking forward to hanging out with karin and andy. karin was one of my first bloggers and it's been fun to follow along for the last year+

sunday is the race, which i'm really looking forward to. i'll try to get a race report posted as soon as possible on sunday night.

here's hoping the rest of the trip goes smoothly and that all the bumps are out of the way now.